And Then Take Love's True Form
by ambitiousbutrubbish
Summary: Newt decides he's going to kiss the frog. After all, his life has been pretty weird. It's not that hard for him to find it within himself to believe that the frog with the injured right leg is actually Hermann after an experiment gone wrong. - Asexual!Newt/Hermann. A Missing Scene from Libido Has Nothing To Do With It.


**A/N: **Written for the prompt: "have any character kiss someone or something unexpected" [from MysteryGal5]. Could probably be considered a missing scene from Libido Has Nothing To Do With It, although it's not really necessary to read that to understand this (although maybe you'd like to, since people seem to have enjoyed my Ace!Newt story)

(Yes I took the title from Fiona's spell in Shrek what of it?)

* * *

Newt jogs into the lab late, which is not unusual. What is unusual is that Hermann is not already there, berating him for being unprofessional. What is even more unusual, though, is the frog.

The frog is sitting in the middle of Hermann's immaculately clean workbench, staring at Hermann's blackboards in a way that can only be described as mournful. Newt is a biologist, among a number of other things, and though he did his fair share of dissecting frogs in high school, he's by no means an expert on them. Regardless, he's pretty sure that this species of frog is not native to the area.

It's huge, for a frog - or at least Newt thinks it's huge for a frog - and green, and when Newt looks closely, he can see that its back right leg is flattened and hanging uselessly out to the side, rather than being tucked up neatly underneath its body like the other three. He has no idea how the frog managed to get up onto Hermann's desk, but it can't have been an easy task. Newt decides to let it be.

After all, anyone who can look that despairing at Hermann's equations is Newt's kind of guy. Even if it is a frog.

-00000-

A new sample was delivered to the lab this morning. A skinmite. Dead, of course, but not dead long, and still in perfect condition for research. All of its legs are still attached, which frankly, Newt has come to understand as some kind of minor miracle.

A good hour and a half passes before Newt looks up again from his workbench. The frog is glaring at him. Newt doesn't know how a frog can glare, lacking as it is most of the essential ingredients that make effective glaring possible, but he can sense it, somehow. The distain. He wonders if this means that he's finally going crazy, despite how adamantly he'd promised himself in the beginning he wasn't going to do so. If he is losing it, he resolves not to tell Hermann. He doesn't want to give him the satisfaction.

Newt glares back at the frog, which somehow makes him feel slightly better, until he remembers that he's glaring at a frog, which by all accounts isn't doing anything but sitting still in a place where by all rights it shouldn't have been able to get to in the first place. He feels strangely defensive. "Hermann is going to be seriously annoyed when he finds you on his desk, you know."

The frog ribbits loudly when Newt mentions his lab partner's name, but nothing else happens.

It's the first sound the animal has made since Newt walked through the door.

-00000-

He has a bruise puffing up on his arm from where he walked straight into a doorframe, but otherwise Newt managed to leave the lab and pick up some lunch just fine, disregarding the fact that it is 3:30pm before he actually manages to take a bite.

It is difficult to eat. The frog is watching him, he's sure of it, and Newt hates eating with people watching. Now he knows, apparently, that he also hates eating with frogs watching. He can feel its beady eyes on him. He takes a bite of his sandwich and lets his gaze slide over slowly to his left. It's still watching.

It occurs to Newt that perhaps the frog is hungry, and wonders at his chances of catching a fly, if only to make it look away. Ultimately, he decides on 'very low', and resolves to simply pretend that the frog is not there. It's a strategy that has never worked when he can't deal with the pigheadedness of the man he usually shares a lab with and it always ends with shouting and Hermann wheeling his blackboards out of the room because they need some time apart and Newt can't take his samples out of the lab (no matter what he may occasionally think about Hermann, Newt will not stand for it to be said that Hermann would intentionally obstruct what he saw as legitimate scientific research). But that is Hermann, and Newt tipped over the scales to being more in love with the man than frustrated with him a long time ago.

This is just a frog.

-00000-

It's not just a frog. Newt is pretty sure it was spawned in Hell, and risen to torment him for all those frogs he dissected when he was just a teenager. He doesn't understand; the unfairness of it - he'd never particularly wanted to cut up the animals. But it had been them or rats, and he'd had a pet rat growing up and he couldn't bring himself to do it.

It's becoming impossible to work, and Newt had once written a paper while so high on painkillers after a marathon tattooing session that he remembers nothing of the four or five hours it took him to write it except for that there had been a piece of fluff sitting half underneath his 'Q' key that he hadn't been able to look away from. He didn't even remember submitting it for publication, but later he was sent a review that had called it "profound" and "groundbreaking."

But he can't think about anything other than the frog. It doesn't make any sense. It shouldn't even be here, on Hermann's desk, with its lips turned down. Newt supposes that frog lips always look like they're frowning, but this frown is just so familiar.

It reminds him of Hermann, which is ridiculous, but with its glare and its injured right leg Newt can't seem to put the thought out of his mind. Not that he thinks Hermann was sent from Hell to punish him (most of the time, anyway), but the way that he can feel the disapproving gaze from Hermann's side of the lab is probably why he can't concentrate on anything else.

He's just thinking about Hermann. That has to be it.

-00000-

He's probably thinking about Hermann so much because he hasn't seen him since yesterday afternoon. Normally he's much better than this, but he can't really guess at a reason why Hermann wouldn't be in the lab. That hadn't had a fight or even really a disagreement yesterday, so it's not like Hermann would be ignoring him. And even if they had, Hermann would have taken his work out of the lab, and Newt can see the slightly smudged chalk equations mocking him from the blackboard on the other side of the room, taunting him with the fact that he never did get that mathematics degree.

Newt had slept alone last night, but that wasn't so unusual. They have separate quarters, and they used them about as much as they shared. Besides that, he remembers Hermann mentioning yesterday that he was going to be up late running some experiments with Tendo, and Newt has never reacted favourably to being woken up in the middle of the night, no matter how fond he is of the person doing the waking.

But it isn't like Hermann to miss a day in the lab, even if he had pulled an all-nighter. Three weeks after they met, Newt had witnessed the most spectacular caffeine crash he'd ever seen on a real actual person. He's not entirely sure that the reason he started getting to know Hermann wasn't because he couldn't be associated with a lab partner that fell asleep in the middle of briefing the Marshal and knocked over four blackboards in a domino effect without even waking himself up, and so he had decided to keep an eye on Hermann to make sure it never happened again.

Hermann not being here is actually more unlikely than the frog. Newt chances a glance its way again. It has reached out its front right foot to rest on a piece of chalk that should, by all rights, be scribbling out numbers right now. It looks sadly at the chalk, and then at one of the blackboards to the side of it.

Newt can't help but think that Hermann is right handed.

-00000-

Newt decides he's going to kiss the frog. After all, his life has been pretty weird. There are giant, inter-dimensional aliens that periodically level cities along the Pacific Coast, and mankind managed to put aside their centuries of seemingly irreconcilable differences to come together and build giant robots to fight them off. It's not that hard for him to find it within himself to believe that the frog with the injured right leg is actually Hermann after an experiment gone wrong.

Newt was raised on fairy tales in the original German, but he is aware of the Americanised, Hollywood versions. For all that he finds them dull and uninspired, turning a frog back into a Prince by true love's kiss seems far kinder to the creature and whoever may be inside than the Grimm solution of throwing the animal against a wall.

Hermann may not be a Prince - although is father is so influential in his field that he probably is as close as one can be to being one in the sciences - but Newt is pretty sure that Hermann is his true love. Not that he really believes in such things, of course, but Hermann puts up with him working too hard and too much and not really having time for thinking a lot about anything else (although likely by sheer virtue of being exactly the same), and he has never asked for more than Newt is prepared to offer. Nor did he hesitate for a second when Newt told him he was completely uninterested in sex, so if he has a true love, it's definitely Hermann.

And Newt is willing to kiss a frog if it will save him.

-00000-

The frog is drier than he expected it to be, which is probably not excellent, and it is light in his hand as Newt lifts it up to eye level. It rests easily on his palm, but its right leg dangles helplessly down between two of his fingers. He reaches up his other hand and moves the leg gently to rest under its body, and the frog croaks at him in return. It's probably that he's losing it or something, but Newt finds himself grinning tentatively at the frog, strangely charmed by its apparent thankfulness. Hermann is never so impressed by his acts of kindness.

He doesn't _really_ want to kiss the frog. It doesn't seem sanitary or at all pleasant to put his lips to an amphibian that appeared out of seemingly nowhere overnight, but he's urged on by the thought of not having Hermann around to 'accidentally' injure people for giving him odd looks for his tattoos or to hug when he feels the need for physical attention or comfort. It pains him in a way that he knows is purely mental, but that doesn't stop the tightening of his frog-free hand, or the swooping in his chest. He likes what he and Hermann have; it's something he never thought he'd get and he had filed the chance of it away as a fantasy a long time ago, that kind of acceptance and love, that he doesn't think there's much he wouldn't do to keep it. And as he takes a deep breath so that he can hold it, and presses his lips lightly to the top of the animal's head, he knows that kissing frogs is not where he draws that line.

That, of course, is the exact moment that Hermann decides to make his appearance. "You know, Newton, this is why people get the wrong idea about you." Newt doesn't drop the frog because one, that would be cruel and two, he doesn't want Hermann to know just how startled and embarrassed he is right now, but it's a close thing. Instead, he puts it carefully on the table and looks down at it. The frog looks back. It doesn't look sad or reproachful, Newt thinks. It just looks like a frog.

He doesn't say anything, just marches straight up to Hermann, who looks like he's about to start teasing him mercilessly. Hermann also looks pale and there are deep, dark rings around his eyes and he's leaning far more heavily on his cane than he normally needs to. He is clearly only walking about right now because of mass amounts of caffeine in his system, and doesn't seem to have slept since Newt saw him last, which means that he probably only just finished his experiments. He spares a brief thought for Tendo, who isn't great with human conflict, but who has spent at least the last 13 hours with Hermann, a man who is deliberately confrontational even when he's not jacked up on coffee.

Hermann looks tired and hungry and he probably hasn't brushed his teeth or showered or anything in about 36 hours and Newt knows that it should be disgusting but he really doesn't care right now; he freaked himself out thinking that Hermann had gotten himself turned into a frog and that he might not ever get to spend time with the stuffy mathematician again and he'd _missed_ him so much just by getting himself worked up by an idle and admittedly stupid idea. So he plants one on him, right there in the lab, and he doesn't normally do this because he doesn't want to give him the wrong idea, but he really does just _adore_ Hermann a ridiculous amount, doesn't know what he'd do without him.

Hermann doesn't particularly enjoy PDA, and despite the fact that he and Newt hardly ever have outside company in their lab, he doesn't like it when Newt is affectionate here, either. But this time he doesn't (gently) push Newt away, which he takes as a good sign. Unless the reason he doesn't is because he's so grossed out that Newt kissed a frog and is now kissing him that he's frozen up from the shock or something, and Newt wouldn't be surprised by that.

But when he pulls back, Hermann looks surprised, certainly, but also faintly pleased, and there's a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. Newt kisses him again because what the hell, he's had a weird day, and Hermann does shove him away this time, but the look on his face is more playful than uncomfortable and Newt beams at him in response.

Hermann is definitely getting the cuddling of his life tonight.

-00000-

He keeps the frog in a terrarium on the end of his workbench. It doesn't move around all that much, which Newt assumes is because of the leg, but it still manages to eat all the bugs that somehow end up in the lab that Newt catches for it, and if he had to guess, he'd say it seems happy. He calls the frog 'Hermie' because it really pisses Hermann off and then he glares at everything and Newt finds that glare the perfect combination of satisfying and adorable.

Newt and Hermie and Hermann share the lab in relative peacefulness for a week or so before Mako comes to talk to Newt. She is extremely serious and mature for sixteen, which Newt supposes is why it takes her so long to own up to putting the frog in the lab in the first place.

Newt has no idea how she managed to get ahold of the frog here, not even mentioning the fact that it had just the right leg injured, or how she knew how he would react to it, but there's a glint of mischievousness in her eyes that he hasn't seen for a few years, not since she decided that she needed to 'grow up'. Whatever that meant. But he can't stop himself from hugging her tight and laughing probably harder than the situation demands and she laughs with him, softer, but just as genuine. Newt couldn't be prouder of her if she was his own adoptive daughter.

Mako lets him keep the frog.


End file.
